Did jazz improvisation arise as
a side-effect of schizophrenia?
One Professor Dr. Sean Spence from the University of Sheffield believes that
one of the pioneers of jazz improvisation, Charles "Buddy" Bolden, began
improvising as a means of coping with the onset of "dementia praecox", or
schizophrenia; his novel playing style turned out to be so popular that others
began imitating it, and the rest is history.